A couple moves from the big city to the countryside and starts a small farm...wait, you've heard this premise before? What? Trite? Hackneyed? But, I have goats. Really cute pictures of tiny baby goats. And cheesemaking recipes. We slaughter our own pigs and cure our own bacon! Well, that's in the master plan, anyway. Just read it, you'll see.

"United we bargain, divided we beg."

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

This spring, I was all aflutter over the lack of bees during flowering time (What's Wrong With These Pictures?) but the bees must have been there, because the orchard is going crazy. Above is one of my four pear trees, each of which is absolutely loaded with fruit. If I remember right (which I most likely don't) we have a Comice, a Red Bosc, an Anjou, and a Bartlett.

Three of the trees, including this one, are young trees we planted ourselves, but the fourth - the Bartlett - is a hoary old beast some sixty years old. It has on years and off years, and this is definitely an on year. It looks to have some five hundred pears on it. Some of those will drop off immature, of course, and others will be lost to scab or other infirmities, but that leaves plenty of pears for us. And the neighbors. There will be enough pears to feed the Russian Army, as my mother used to say.

Pears make good pie, and pears can be canned as sauce, especially mixed with apples, blueberries, and blackberries. Pears can be dehydrated (though I hate dehydrating stuff) and late ripening pears can be stored wrapped in paper in a cool shed. Pears can also be fed to livestock (carefully; in moderation) and pears can be given away to friends and neighbors.

Alas, pears cannot be pressed for juice, at least not with the equipment I have. Pears turn to mush and gum up the works. I can throw a few pears in with a batch of apples, but I can't just press pears by themselves.